Deeplinks Blog posts about PATRIOT Act

Since President George W. Bush signed this bill into law on October 26, 2001, the Patriot Act has been ardently defended by its supporters in the intelligence community and harshly criticized by members of Congress, the tech industry, and privacy advocates like us. Despite the debates that have unfolded over the last 15 years, including last year’s reforms through the USA FREEDOM Act, there’s still a lot to learn about this controversial law.

USA Freedom requires the NSA to stop collecting our telephone records. An open question when the law passed was what should happen to the mountain of records the NSA has already collected. Will the records be destroyed? Will the NSA keep them? Will it be able to keep using them?

You may have heard that the Patriot Act is set to expire soon. That’s not quite the case. The Patriot Act was a large bill, as were the reauthorizations that followed in 2005 and 2006. Not all of it sunsets. But three provisions do expire on June 1st: Section 215, the "Lone Wolf provision," and the "roving wiretap" provision.

After months of negotiations, pressure from advocacy groups, and tens of thousands of messages from concerned citizens, the Senate failed to move the USA Freedom Act forward for a final vote. While it was a tough loss, a Republican Congress will be forced to take up NSA reform since three sections of the Patriot Act expire in June. The USA Freedom Act—a bipartisan bill with support in both houses of Congress—sets the minimum requirements needed for surveillance reform and should be reintroduced in the upcoming Congress.